Stickman Empires

A single-lane war game where you never control anybody directly. Income accumulates, units cost money, and you decide what to spawn and when — then they walk toward the enemy base and fight whatever is coming the other way. Everything interesting happens in the purchasing. The system is rock-paper-scissors with an economy attached. Cheap units buy time and block, expensive ones break through but leave you broke if they die badly, and ranged units are worthless without something in front of them — so the composition of what you send matters more than the quantity. Spending everything immediately is the beginner's mistake; holding income to respond to what the opponent sent is the intermediate one; knowing which of those the current moment calls for is the game. There is a campaign with escalating opponents and an upgrade tree between battles that changes what is affordable. Battles take five to ten minutes and are decided gradually rather than suddenly. It plays with taps on a phone, runs on anything, and is a genuinely strategic game behind a very simple interface. The campaign is long enough that the upgrade tree matters, and the opponents are designed to punish a single favoured composition — so a player who found one strategy that works will be forced to find a second one within a few battles.